This book is the first to offer a systematic account of the role of language in the development and interpretation of physics. An historical-conceptual analysis of the co-evolution of mathematical and physical concepts leads to the classical/quatum interface. Bohrian orthodoxy stresses the indispensability of classical concepts and the functional role of mathematics. This book analyses ways of extending, and then going beyond this orthodoxy orthodoxy. Finally, the book analyzes how a revis...

Cosmology is in crisis. The more we discover, the more puzzling the universe appears to be. How and why are the laws of nature what they are? A philosopher and a physicist, world-renowned for their radical ideas in their fields, argue for a revolution. To keep cosmology scientific, we must replace the old view in which the universe is governed by immutable laws by a new one in which laws evolve. Then we can hope to explain them. The revolution that Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin p...

Why is the future so different from the past? Why does the past affect the future and not the other way around? What does quantum mechanics really tell us about the world? In this important and accessible book Huw Price throws fascinating new light on some of the great mysteries of modern physics and connects them in a wholly original way. Price begins with the mystery of the arrow of time. Why for example does disorder always increase as required by the second law of thermodynamics? Price...

A groundbreaking solution to the problem of induction, based on Ayn Rand's theory of concepts.Inspired by and expanding on a series of lectures presented by Leonard Peikoff, David Harriman presents a fascinating answer to the problem of induction-the epistemological question of how we can know the truth of inductive generalizations.Ayn Rand presented her revolutionary theory of concepts in her book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. As Dr. P...

"Isaac Newton was a shy, quiet boy growing up on a farm in England 300 years ago. He was not a very good student and nobody paid much attention to him. Nobody that is, except the school bully. One day the bully punched Isaac in the stomach. That hurt, and that got Isaac very mad! He pulled himself up straight and fought back. Isaac pushed the bully onto the ground and rubbed his face in the mud. All the other kids hated the bully and came and cheered for Isaac.So Isaac taught the bu...

What does realism about the quantum state imply? What follows when quantum theory is applied without restriction, if need be, to the whole universe? These are the questions which an illustrious team of philosophers and physicists debate in this volume. All the contributors are agreed on realism, and on the need, or the aspiration, for a theory that unites micro- and macroworlds, at least in principle. But the further claim argued by some is that if you allow the Schrödinger equation unrest...

Newton's bucket, Einstein's elevator, Schrödinger's cat – these are some of the best-known examples of thought experiments in the natural sciences. But what function do these experiments perform? Are they really experiments at all? Can they help us gain a greater understanding of the natural world? How is it possible that we can learn new things just by thinking?In this revised and updated new edition of his classic text The Laboratory of the Mind, James Robert Brown conti...

In this classic, David Bohm was the first to offer us his causal interpretation of the quantum theory. Causality and Chance in Modern Physics continues to make possible further insight into the meaning of the quantum theory and to suggest ways of extending the theory into new directions.

The third edition of Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity has been carefully updated to reflect significant developments, including a new chapter covering important recent work in the foundations of physics.A new edition of the premier philosophical study of Bell’s Theorem and its implication for the relativistic account of space and timeDiscusses Roderich Tumiulka’s explicit, relativistic theory that can reproduce the quantum mechanical violation of Bell’s ...

In this magisterial work, Roland Omnès takes us from the academies of ancient Greece to the laboratories of modern science as he seeks to do no less than rebuild the foundations of the philosophy of knowledge. One of the world's leading quantum physicists, Omnès reviews the history and recent development of mathematics, logic, and the physical sciences to show that current work in quantum theory offers new answers to questions that have puzzled philosophers for centuries: Is the world ulti...

This comprehensive history traces the development of mathematical ideas and the careers of the men responsible for them. Volume 1 looks at the disciplines origins in Babylon and Egypt, the creation of geometry and trigonometry by the Greeks, and the role of mathematics in the medieval and early modern periods. Volume 2 focuses on calculus, the rise of analysis in the 19th century, and the number theories of Dedekind and Dirichlet. The concluding volume covers the revival of projective geom...

Differential geometry arguably offers the smoothest transition from the standard university mathematics sequence of the first four semesters in calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations to the higher levels of abstraction and proof encountered at the upper division by mathematics majors. Today it is possible to describe differential geometry as "the study of structures on the tangent space," and this text develops this point of view.This book, unlike other introductory t...